Co-founder and India CEO Rajesh Magow is replacing Deep Kalra as group CEO of online travel company MakeMyTrip. Kalra is transitioning to the role of Executive Chairman. Magow will focus on driving growth in the three core brands — MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and Redbus. Kalra will focus on product innovation and expansion, geographic growth, business model innovation, and corporate development. In Q3 FY19-20, gross bookings increased 19% YoY to $1.7 billion, and revenue increased 16% YoY to $147 million.

Growth in the packages segment was driven by better customer targeting, better organisation of products in categories such as honeymoons, adventures, cruises, among other factors.

500,000 international properties listed

72,000 accommodation properties and 19,000 alternative accommodation properties, which include villas, apartments, homestays, hostels, etc. The company partnered with the tourism boards of Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand to promote homestays.

Air ticketing:

Revenue increased 10% YoY to $47.9 million,

Flight segments grew more at 15% YoY to 11.6 million.

Gross bookings stood at $986.5 million, an increased of 20% YoY. Even though the domestic air industry was impacted by the shutdown of Jet Airways, growth re-accelerated to nearly 6% in Q3 2019, Kalra said.

“Black” and “Double Black” had 1.1 million and 139,000 members respectively.

Goibibo’s loyalty platform Go Rewards has 2.3 million users.

Corporate: Over 715 mid-size corporates and over 4,000 SMEs are now registered on the company’s corporate travel program myBiz.

Loss for Q3 FY19-20 remained flat over the same period of 2018 — at roughly $29 million. Marketing and sales promotion expenses, which include customer acquisition costs, customer costs, and loyalty program costs for standalone hotel bookings, and brand advertisements decreased by 9.5% to $45 million.

Impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak: Kalra said MakeMyTrip’s domestic business should remain “fairly insulated”, but there were higher than normal cancellations in the outbound travel due to the outbreak, specifically for outbound eastwards travel. China, Hong Kong, and Macau has been hit the most, while smaller markets such as Singapore, like Thailand, Malaysia, and even Vietnam and Cambodia to some degree has been impacted. A few cancellations have been seen in travel to Kerala, where three cases of the novel coronavirus have been detected, but it was insignificant, Kalra said.

Direct traffic on MakeMyTrip and Goibibo continued to account for more than half the traffic, and is also aided by the “very high” share of transactions via mobile apps and insights.

MakeMyTrip’s chatbot “Gia” was improved, and can now answer queries on flight status, terminal information, cancellation and refund queries; allegedly faster than a human operator. The bot can also manage post-sales queries, faster than a call center. Call center contacts by international flight bookers fell as the online date feature was expanded to support over 30 airlines.